Bōrě xīnjīng zhuólún jiě 般若心經斲輪解
“Wheelwright’s” Explication of the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra by 通容 (述, sobriquet Fèiyǐn 費隱 / Biéfēng 別峰)
About the work
A one-fascicle Heart Sūtra commentary by Fèiyǐn 通容 Tōngróng (1593–1661), one of the leading Línjì-school Chan masters of the late-Míng / early-Qīng transition and the dharma-heir of Mìyún 圓悟 Yuánwù. Preserved in the Wàn xù-zàng / Manji zoku-zō as X548. Signature: 「明福州後學釋 費隱通容 述」 — “expounded by Shì-Fèiyǐn Tōngróng, junior student of Fúzhōu of the Míng”.
The title — Zhuólún jiě 斵輪解 (“Wheelwright’s Explication”) — alludes to the famous Zhuāngzǐ “Tiāndào” 天道 chapter parable of Lúnbiǎn 輪扁 the wheelwright, who tells Duke Huán of Qí that the books the duke reads contain only the dregs of the ancient sages: real wisdom, like the wheelwright’s craft of trimming a wheel-spoke to perfect fit, is bù néng yǐ yán wén (“incommunicable in words”). Tōngróng’s title-allusion places his Heart Sūtra commentary self-consciously in the Daoist-Chan literature-of-the-incommunicable tradition.
Prefaces
The work opens with Tōngróng’s own self-preface (No. 548-A), an unusually personal and biographically rich introduction:
- “In Tàichāng 1 [= 1620, briefly the reign of the Tàichāng emperor 朱常洛 Zhū Chánglò before his death after one month] I winter-retreated at Yúnmén 雲門. As it was raining and snowing, in the silence I sat with two or three dharma-friends, and we talked about the various sūtras. We had often expounded one type of Heart Sūtra commentary [orally] but had never put it in words. Some other day, perhaps as a teacher of devas-and-humans, one cannot leave only this in silence. So I took up the brush and annotated, completing the work in ten days.”
- “In the spring of Tiānqǐ xīn-yǒu (= year 1, 1621), I heard that Master 一雨 Yīyǔ was opening lectures on the Śūraṅgama-sūtra; I respectfully took my explication and went to seek correction from him. The Master, having looked over the volume, embraced it and agreed to write a preface — but as we met busy in the lecture-hall, the agreement was not consummated, and afterwards no further appointment was possible. Today, before I knew it, seven years have passed [= ~1627]. I retrieved this jiě from my bag, and it had become an old item. But what was made then and what is seen now — like the fù-suì zhī jiàn xiōng-suì jìn (‘the rich year’s seeing the lean year’s leaving’ from Mèngzǐ), it is acceptable.”
- “Now I have heard the parable of the five hundred bhikṣus each explaining the Buddha’s words. They asked: ‘Who matches the Buddha’s intent?’ The Buddha said: ‘None of you matches my intent.’ All said: ‘If we do not match the Buddha’s intent, must we not have committed a fault?’ The Buddha said: ‘Although you do not match my intent, each of you accords with right principle and is fit for the holy teaching, with merit and no fault.’ By this measure, then, both the old explication can be preserved, and new meanings should not be excluded — let later records make clear that early-and-later, all explain the Buddha’s words.”
- “Moreover, the intent of those who annotate sūtras differs: some seek breadth and delight in much hearing; some prefer simplicity and follow brevity; some seek the partial-strength of either side and find their school. Therefore in the lecture-hall and in viewing explications, one must be open-hearted, and not affirm this in order to negate that. Hence the saying: ‘What is hated about clinging to one is that it injures the way; raising one and abolishing a hundred.’ Even so, the Heart Sūtra explications are like sweat from oxen filling a roof-beam (sweat-of-oxen, beam-of-rafters — i.e., countless), and what among them carries the jīn-shēng and yù-zhèn (gold-sound and jade-vibration of perfection) — my own explication too I no longer judge. The lay devotee Cài of Fúyán [Cài jūshì 蔡居士] requested it printed, so I record the year and month thus.”
- Signed: 「別峰通容識」 — “Recorded by Biéfēng Tōngróng”.
The body of the commentary proceeds line-by-line in a clear Chan-style exposition. The opening on bōrě bōluómìduō glosses the title in standard Sanskrit-Chinese terms; the body reads each phrase of the sūtra in the Línjì jiàn xìng (see-the-nature) frame characteristic of Mìyún-circle Chan.
Abstract
X548 is one of the most personally documented Heart Sūtra commentaries in the canon, with Tōngróng’s preface providing remarkable biographical detail about the work’s composition: a winter-retreat at Yúnmén in 1620, with two or three dharma-friends, completed in ten days; sent for correction to Yīyǔ in 1621; preserved in a bag for seven years; finally printed in c. 1627 at the request of the lay devotee Cài of Fúyán. The preface’s reflective discussion of commentarial pluralism — the parable of the five hundred bhikṣus, the warning against clinging-to-one, the yù-zhèn (jade-vibration) standard — is one of the more thoughtful early-Qīng statements on the place of the individual commentary within the long Hṛdaya tradition.
Doctrinally Tōngróng’s reading is Línjì-style jiàn xìng, with characteristic Chan rhetorical idioms drawn from the Mìyún Yuánwù circle’s yǔlù tradition. The commentary’s title-allusion to the Daoist Zhuāngzǐ wheelwright-parable signals an bù néng yǐ yán wén (“incommunicable in words”) epistemology that nevertheless authorises the commentary as a useful approximation.
For the wider history of the period, X548 is a primary witness to the late-Wànlì / Tiānqǐ Línjì revival’s textual production, and to the institutional life of the Yúnmén and Fúyán monastic centres in the Mìyún Yuánwù lineage.
Composition date: 1620 (Tàichāng 1) per the preface; printed c. 1627 (Tiānqǐ 7). Both notBefore and notAfter are 1620 for composition.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located of X548 specifically.
- Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China (Oxford: OUP, 2008) — fundamental on Mìyún Yuánwù’s circle including Fèiyǐn Tōngróng; treats the textual-controversial work Wǔdēng yántǒng in detail.
- Jiang Wu, “Building a Dharma Transmission Monastery in Seventeenth-Century China: The Case of Mount Huangbo,” East Asian History 31 (2006): 29–52 — for the Fèiyǐn-Yǐnyuán transmission to Japan.
- Helen J. Baroni, Obaku Zen: The Emergence of the Third Sect of Zen in Tokugawa Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2000) — for the Japanese Ōbaku-school context flowing from Fèiyǐn’s lineage.
Other points of interest
The Zhuāngzǐ wheelwright allusion is significant: it places Tōngróng’s commentary explicitly in the Daoist-Chan bù lì wén zì (“not setting up letters”) tradition, which paradoxically authorises commentary as the useful approximation to a teaching that cannot be fully written. This is a sophisticated philosophical-literary move characteristic of Mìyún-circle Línjì self-positioning.
The biographical detail in the preface — the date-precise Yúnmén winter retreat, the named dharma-friends, the reference to Yīyǔ’s Śūraṅgama lectures — is independently valuable as a documentary glimpse into the daily life of the Línjì revival’s elite teaching circle in the immediate aftermath of the political crisis of 1620 (the Tàichāng emperor’s brief reign and the yáo-shū-àn aftermath).